In that most recent spiral late last year, things got so bad again that suddenly things I hadn't considered in a long time were back on the table. Including, finally, going back to see a psychiatrist - something I hadn’t done in several years.

I spent hours on the phone to unhelpful receptionists citing various eligibility requirements and with "A Beautiful Mind"-esque spreadsheet of various clinics, treatments offered, cost, etc. It all felt like an awful flashback to episode 2's "Are You Crazy Enough?" gameshow scene. Eventually Graham nudged me to do the awkward-as-hell thing and ask a well-connected colleague for help in this quest, which was much more fruitful (and a sad reflection of our system).

But my new psychiatrist is calm and patient and a good listener.

I actually chose this particular psychiatrist because I figured, having tried all the standard treatments, I needed something new. Something leftfield. He specialises in psychedelic therapy, among other such not-so-standard things, which I'm fascinated by. 

But then the strangest thing happened. The very standard thing he suggested I try first - a humble antidepressant - actually helped. 

Before long, that existential plughole I’d been circling for months faded from view again. And I thought, well this is interesting… 

If you've listened to all of No Feeling Is Final you may remember in ep 4 I give a long play-by-play of my experience of psych meds. Over many years and MANY drugs tried, the results had been very underwhelming. Basically, I'd never found anything effective, and I'd had a bunch of side effects.

For the longest time, I’d felt like my inability to respond to psych meds just reinforced that feeling of being uniquely fucked up. And then, in more recent years, I guess that had softened to something more wistful, like: well I’m glad they work for some people, but not for me I guess.

So it’s a strange feeling, finding one that’s actually helping. I’m still a little afraid to talk about it publicly, for fear of jinxing it. 

(For those of you now thinking 'why isn't she naming the specific drug???' I'm not trying to hold out on you. I just know that if I name it specifically, I risk sending you down a rabbit hole that may not actually help you, because this stuff is so individual, and I know other people who haven’t found this same drug especially useful. Suffice to say, it's a third generation antidepressant - so one that wasn’t around back when I was doing my ‘full menu of psych drugs’ degustation ten years ago.)

Because of course, as any of you also on the long term path will know, it’s hard to trust the answers you find. It’s hard not to think that this ‘answer’ will change on me, like so many others have over the years. 

This is such a central part of the long term mental health experience, that doesn’t get talked about enough: uncertainty. Even when things are going well. It’s something we deliberately tried to write into No Feeling Is Final. At the end of each ep, we wanted the listener to feel like ‘oh okay, Honor’s finally found The Answer’, only for the very next episode to reveal that each new ‘answer’ had its own limitations. 

The long and winding road

There are so many twists and turns on the long term mental health path, and no one gives us any kind of map. (Or when they do, the maps don’t match the road at all!) 

But you know what? Despite all this, for now I remain nervously optimistic that this latest answer I’ve found is something genuinely useful - one more thing to put in my backpack of useful things. 

And whatever happens next, I’m proud of myself for staying on this winding, twisting and turning path.

It’s so much trying isn’t it? So many pep talks to give yourself to keep at it, to try the next new thing (which might in fact be an old thing you’d long ago given up on, but are circling back to again out of sheer desperation, without high hopes). 

If the profound response we got to No Feeling Is Final taught me one thing, it’s how important it is to SHARE this uncertainty. To be HONEST about it. To share these messy mental health stories that don’t have one clear takeaway, but are instead more human stories. Just messy humans doing our best. 

Big Feels Club: For those of us on the long-term mental health path

This is also exactly why we made the Big Feels Club - our exclusive little club for people on the winding long term mental health path. As a kind of antidote to those well-meaning but overly simplistic mental health narratives out there (Just ask for help! It’s so easy!)

Because when you’re on that winding path yourself, it is simply so important to be able to see others on the long term path with you. Not because they have the answer you’re missing. But because we’re all in it together, nudging each other along that path. Calling out from just up around that next bend, just to say, ‘Hey! You! I see you! I see how hard you’re trying! And I’m still here too!’

In the seven years since No Feeling Is Final, boyfriend Graham and I have taken Big Feels Club - the funny little mental health initiative we mention in the second to last episode - from being a tiny experiment in collective feelings run out of Graham's living room, to being a thriving community of 7,000 big feelers across Australia and the world.

Our monthly newsletter aims to 'tell the truth about mental health, in a way that's still encouraging'.

It's a truly special community of fellow travellers, walking the long term mental health path together (and so many club members found us through No Feeling!).

Big Feels Club is where Graham and I both write about our mental health experiences from the inside, where we try to answer that eternal question: I've already asked for help and I still feel awful… now what??

(Side note: in the show, Graham comes across as 'the one who has his shit together'. But the truth is, he's an anxious and deeply sensitive bunny himself. As if you couldn't guess?)

Still wondering what 'a club for people with big feelings' even is? You can read all about Big Feels and how you can get involved here, in this little letter Graham wrote especially for No Feeling Is Final listeners.